


Sing The Sea To Sleep

by snowflake_sunflower



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Canon Compliant, Like really slow, Mags' head is not a great place pls be warned, Slow Burn, possibly a lil pretentious in honour of the bard himself
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:34:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27104311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snowflake_sunflower/pseuds/snowflake_sunflower
Summary: Maglor and Ulmo in the second age.
Relationships: Maglor | Makalaurë & Ulmo, Maglor | Makalaurë/Ulmo
Comments: 4
Kudos: 16





	Sing The Sea To Sleep

Makalaure has always related to the world by sound, but his head has never been so resoundingly  _ empty. _ It is not merely the lack of the tune (the one he always thought he’d been following, the one about righting an old wrong at whatever cost, whatever cost -

But then the cost was too great- )

This silence is actively drowning out everything he could, probably  _ should, _ be thinking, feeling. He can just about remember the sweet song of the holy-cursed light, but actually he finds he prefers the silence to that, because it is always echoed by the screaming (of his victims? His brothers? His sons?)

He just walks - no, wades, he’s on a beach - away (from there, that place, he can’t think about why he has to go but he must get away away away), and his thoughts fade wither into the silence with every step.

* * *

He must have fallen eventually, because he awakes with first light. There’s sand and salt crusted on his eyes that makes them hard to open, and his limbs are first dull lumps of rock, and then they ache right down in the bones. He is, he realises, being lulled by the lapping waves. He should probably be worried about where the tide is going, but thinking at all means he will think about  _ that _ . It is much easier to close his eyes and sway back into thoughtless quiet.

When he wakes again, the sea is miles away, the sun is blinding, and his throat has never been so dry in his life. His eyesight is sun-bleached and his ears are ringing. The only water at hand is the sea. This may be a problem. For all that Makalaure can’t bring himself to care if he  _ dies _ (maybe he could see his family again- ), he isn’t prepared to be uncomfortable.

Well. Not this particular kind of uncomfortable, anyway. There’s a murky idea taking shape somewhere in his head where if he looks at it too long it will disperse like so much sea-spray, that if he just keeps walking that will be penalty enough and he won’t have to face the Valar. He won’t get to go home either, but this could count as a rest, of a sort, at long last. (And there is nothing poetic in dying of thirst the next day when the sea was  _ right there  _ to drown in after- )

He staggers over the bleak, sun-blasted sands to the water’s edge and scoops horrible, gritty, salty water into his mouth because it is better than no water, barely, and then he starts to walk. Soon enough he comes across some lesser river that runs into the sea, and all but drinks it dry. He keeps walking.

Eventually the walking cracks open something ragged in his chest and he starts to sing, voice shredded by the salt and the wind, and about two verses in he realises he’s singing a lament for the Noldor, and starts to weep as well.

* * *

There is a storm brewing. Makalaure is loosely aware that it has something to do with the sundered earth (a fiery chasm yawning right down to the centre of the world- ) and how the once-cliffs are gone into the hungering sea, which is closer to his forsaken lands than the old shores. He has been stumbling ever eastwards afore the sea for maybe a month now, and this is the greatest storm he’s seen yet. The sky is so awash with rain there is little difference above or beneath the waves. Maybe he’ll drown after all.

Actually, he’s not sure why he’s been putting so much effort into not doing that. But he’s still trying not to think about anything so it remains a mystery. Sheer force of habit, perhaps. (He’d spent so long stopping his brother-

And then- )

But at last he’s been caught out, girded by the rising tide and two high promontories, and thick clouds bear down from above, brilliant with lightning; and the sea is turning fierce over the rocks, dark and bright in harmony with the sky (dark with blood blood blood- )

Despite all of his strangely enduring resolve not to die, he can’t quite bring himself to fret about it, either.

He turns his face to the sea, and raises his lament once more into the raging spray.

* * *

Makalaure awakens with a jerk. He can’t figure out why - he wasn’t having a nightmare, he doesn’t think - until there is a keen pain on his thigh. Then he screams, because there is a large gull (soaring away from a tower with the- ) glaring at him. It screeches back and he kicks it as he flails, and it melts into a crab and scuttles away. He blinks. He stares at the pale sky for a while, torn between panicking about that and going back to sleep.

He sits up, suddenly noticing that he is unexpectedly alive. And sopping wet. He is sat in a rockpool, and there is something strange and slimy under his left forearm. He flees down to the sea and washes it some, and then he is just kneeling in the foam, feeling scrubbed out on the inside, staring out over the sea.

It is flat and green, like sea-glass, and the sky is sun-white, like a dream, not a shade of the night’s dark fury and-

And he is singing a song that is halfway to a sea-hymn and he means it. He’s never understood the Falmari and Falathrim so well (blood- )

He turns and continues walking down the beach, but he keeps the song and stays his course to the shallows. He has lost his gaiters at some point anyway.


End file.
